


but deliver us from evil

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: (neither of those by Turkey), Easter, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Greece/Egypt, Past Sexual Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, Religion, Romans being terrible in ways Romans were historically terrible, Theology, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:56:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After almost two hundred years to pick up the pieces of his life, Herakles might have forgiven Sadik. He's just not sure he's happy about it. (Hesitant, angsty Turkey/Greece with bonus religious guilt. Rated R for thematic reasons.) </p><p>Old summary: Herakles has a chat with a priest and doesn't stab Sadik. Absolutely no one enjoys themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Additional non-archive warnings: referenced past domestic violence; complex emotions and thoughts about it.
> 
> Opinions of the characters are not necessarily the opinions of the author. My apologies for vagueness and liberties taken regarding Greek Orthodoxy. This is trying to be the start of a WIP, but I have no time this semester so it may have to stay a oneshot. Um. Watch this space?

Every week at bare minimum, Herakles meets Sadik. It's in a gay bar in Athens or Istanbul, in Sadik's house in Ankara, in a hotel outside the UN, or rarely in the latest of Herakles' series of barely distinguishable, always-dilapidated apartments. Invariably, they argue. Almost always, they have sex. Sometimes, for variety, Herakles punches him first. Occasionally he punches him after if Sadik makes the mistake of talking to him then.

After punching Sadik and storming off, he tells Mohamed that he can't help it, that Sadik is too infuriating _not_ to punch, that he hates Sadik, that he was drunk, that Sadik said something insulting about his mother because apparently killing her wasn't enough. Mohamed makes him tea in the Egyptian style with sugar and mint and doesn't say much, but strokes Herakles' hair or shoulder and nods. 

Herakles isn't sure why he bothers making excuses to Mohamed. Provided Herakles doesn't damage his face, Mohamed doesn't care if he punches Sadik. He wouldn't care if Herakles stabbed him. It's entirely possible that if he was present, he would cheer Herakles on.

Less than once a week, but more than once a month, Herakles goes to church.

His sleep cycle can make it difficult to get there. Falling asleep on your feet in church makes an unfortunate public spectacle in a way that falling asleep at your desk doesn't. But unlike work, he only has to stay awake a couple of hours and then he can go home and go to bed, so it mostly works out. He prefers either afternoon services or very early morning ones, so that he can stay up until they're over.

Every ten years or so, when the older patrons and the priest are starting to wonder why he never ages, never marries, never materializes a single relative, he switches churches. He switches apartments rather more often than that, so he always has an excuse for the new one.

As often as is typical of the members of the church and no more, he goes to confession.

*

On his thirty-second visit to confession in this particular church, Herakles confesses to a fairly typical litany of sins for him: lying, greed, theft (he privately thinks of this part of the list as Guilty Of Being A Country); sodomy and fornication (these are his personal favorites); and the last time he punched Sadik in the face and broke his nose.

As usual, he spends a lot of effort trying not to check out mentally. The incense and the lull of familiar routine inside his priest's head make him want to fall asleep; the discomfort of what he's saying makes him want to blank and leave the priest with a carefully constructed mask; and the repetitive ritual gives him an easy way out.

Fighting to stay present, he taps into his remaining capacity for sincerity.

If he could feel guilty for being a country he probably wouldn't be one. At any rate, those decisions aren't his. He gives the lying, greed and theft to the priest as a sort of service to his officials. Just one of the benefits of having an official Nation: maybe if he delivers their sins to God on their behalf, they have a chance at forgiveness. It isn't supposed to work like that, he knows the theological details of why this is a flight of fancy on his part, but they  _are_ literally a part of him. Perhaps it will work like that this once.

That leaves him with repentance for the other ones. It isn't hard at all to summon regret for sleeping with Sadik. He isn't certain why he even does it. His throat is sore from having Sadik's cock shoved down it, the bruises on his thighs made kneeling in church this morning profoundly uncomfortable, and anyone on earth could see this is a mistake.

Every so often people tell him so. Last time he talked to Albania about it she cried. Last time Serbia walked in on him and Sadik there was a lot of swearing and the words 'janissary traitor,' 'self-destructiveness' and 'mind your own fucking business' were exchanged. Then Herakles punched Serbia instead of Sadik. Variety _is_ always nice.

He knows regretting terrible choices in partners is not exactly the same as regretting being gay, or regretting “indulging homosexual impulses.” God is just going to have to meet him halfway here. Halfway, absentminded belief is as far as Herakles will meet him. He's less religious than Serbia or Albania or even Sadik; he believes in God in an absent sort of way. It's a more likely answer than some of the other options. Having spent many hours debating the point he's decided the best way to hedge his bets is to come down with monotheism. 

In this and in all other things he is the opposite of his mother; deliberately, but so casually it seems to be natural to observers. Where his mother had passionate, fanatic frenzy for the pagan gods of her childhood and furious rejection of Christianity, he has a careless belief that wavers into agnosticism. She dedicated her life to war and diplomacy and the gods, the great matters of history. He lives his in the quiet rhythms that are so quickly torn to pieces by the pursuit of glory. Where she lived as a man of honor, he has long since resigned himself to the knowledge that he is incapable here on both counts.

He returns to the list of sins. Guilt for punching Sadik is a stranger question. There is a list of checks and balances to consider – did Sadik provoke him? Was the provocation enough to justify it or merely an excuse? Does Herakles  _care_ if he deserved it on this particular day, or is the entire history of debts so great that new provocation is irrelevant against it?

Does it matter? Sadik's transgressions are a matter for _his_ God. Herakles has only his own to consider here. He summons guilt at least for being so easy to provoke, but that is taking the easy way out if anything is.

Here, he admits to himself and perhaps to God what he is afraid of: perhaps he picks fights with Sadik not because Sadik deserves it, or because of his provocations, but because he wants to justify what Sadik did to  _him_ . Herakles hopes, or he is afraid, that if he can return the favor fully he will be as bad as Sadik. Then he will no longer have to engage in the slow process of disentangling his emotions from the relationship that lasted six hundred years.

It's been two hundred more, after all, and Herakles isn't sure he's capable of leaving for good.

The penance has been assigned, confession is over and Herakles should leave. But the priest has something on his mind, something he wants to say. At service to his people as ever, and made drowsy with dissociation, Herakles lingers.

The young, progressive priest uses the deliberate and careful tone of someone who has absolutely no idea what they are doing but has been practicing just in case. He uses it to ask Herakles if he is a prostitute.

The pattern of ritual breaks. Herakles snaps from his thoughts back into the room. He is suddenly aware of the fan weakly churning the air, the gold studs he forgot to take out of his ears and the traces of the eye makeup he tried to wipe off this morning with no time to shower, and the litany of sins he has been reciting nearly every week for the past year. (Also, because he is a nation, super aware of how hot the priest is in his vestments and the woman who is cleaning the church bathrooms thirty feet away and the exact location of the tides on his coastlines much, much farther away).

He has to say something. Because he has  _not_ been anticipating this moment, when he opens his mouth what comes out is “How long have you been practicing for this?” 

Belatedly he adds, “Father,” as if that would make it more polite.

He is not nervous. He is two thousand years of history built on top of each other, office buildings on top of Ottoman ruins on top of Byzantium on top of his mother's bones, and he is unmovable without the force of an earthquake. But the priest is young and his and Herakles doesn't want to torment him.

“A while,” the priest admits, fortunately not offended – dammit, Herakles has forgotten his name again, it's so hard to keep track. “Since March, at least.” He hesitates, obviously unprepared, but all of those weeks of practice have built up _determination_ , if not actual confidence. He continues, “You don't have to answer the question, but I would like to remind you that I am here for my parishioners. If you need help...”

His mind is alight with concern and not judgment. Herakles really, truly does not want to torment him, so he goes about finding an answer. He starts to say no and thinks, almost unwillingly, of the meetings discussing the possibility of a bail out for Greece; thinks of sitting through two hours of dinner with France,  _France_ of all people lecturing him about financial responsibility and blowing him in the men's bathroom after anyway; considers that you are not supposed to lie to priests and this is confidential anyway; and says, finally, “Yes.”

He has been a prostitute in the more typical manner involving having sex with strangers for aluables, too, if not recently. Frankly, he liked that a lot better. He had more choice about the details.

“I see,” the priest says, hesitantly. Herakles wonders, not particularly charitably, if he rehearsed anything past that point. But he goes on, “As I said. If you need any kind of help – you don't have to do this forever, you know...”

Herakles remembers resignedly that as young as the priest is, Herakles looks younger than him. He is eyeballed at anywhere between sixteen and twenty-five on a regular basis, and people who estimate the later end have usually known him for a few years and added those onto their first estimates.

“I'm alright, Father,” he says. He chooses his words with more care now that he hasaccepted the fact that this conversation is definitely actually happening and he has not yet stormed out of the building and resolved to switch parishes again. “And I am actually gay. The sodomy isn't just for money.” He laughs a little, makes it into a joke in an attempt to lighten the oppressive feeling in the air.

The priest at least smiles. Herakles takes another five years off his age with the expression; he's no older than Herakles looks. Must be a recent seminary graduate.

“Regardless,” he says. “It isn't just the sodomy that concerns me. You confess very regularly to being involved in fights.” He doesn't say it, but a mental image hovers in his mind so loudly that Herakles can see it. The bruises he thought he'd covered with his shirt collar three weeks ago.

Herakles has a sudden inspiration that tells him where this conversation is going and resolves to escape before he is given some kind of domestic violence resource hotline. Confession is over, he can just walk out. “Oh, it's my second career as a bar brawler,” he tries since the first joke went over better than a chunk of marble thrown out a window, and edges for the door.

“I have to go Father, I'm expected at home,” he says and adds _lying to a priest_ to his mental roster of things to bring up in confession next time. That will be an equally fun conversation. At least he'll be more prepared. “If you'll excuse me?”

Very soon he is closing the heavy door of the church behind him and rounding the corner, warping space to bring him not to the next street but to his apartment. Often on Sunday afternoons he lingers in his city on the walk home; sometimes he finds somewhere to nap outside. But now he wants to be in private, and to do a better job of removing the traces of last night.

*

Sadik is in his kitchen.

Herakles frowns and blinks several times. Sadik continues to be in his kitchen, as opposed to disappearing like the trace of a sleep-deprived mind Herakles was hoping for.

“Afternoon.” Sadik waves, leaning against the counter like he's just passing by, just around the corner from his place in Ankara. As opposed to having invaded Herakles' private residence when he was at _church_. Damn the priest for keeping him later than necessarily.

“Why are you _here_ ,” Herakles snaps, stalking past him. Coffee. He needs more coffee for this.

Sadik looks disconcerted at the hostility. Like he has any right to be surprised. Like he thinks he has any right to exist in this particular corner of space. “I thought you would be awake by now. I guess you weren't home.”

“Get out.” Herakles wants to swing around and throw the mortar and pestle at his face because that might actually get him to leave – there's a level of violence that tells them both they aren't joking or play fighting – but when he faces Sadik he finds he can't.

The danger of hearing out his people is that their words carry more weight with him than they sometimes should. The concern has wormed its way into his mind and twisted around his heart. And if he throws the ceramic dishes at Sadik, Sadik will retaliate before he leaves. Herakles doesn't really want to go to church next week with defensive cuts healing across his face and hands. With his economy and people in this state they won't heal before then.

“What's wrong?” Sadik asks him when he doesn't throw them – the lack of violence is as good as saying _go ahead and bother me_ , to him. Herakles makes a sound of inarticulate rage, puts down the dishes and stalks out of the kitchen.

He walks to the bathroom and starts trying, again, to scrub the traces of eyeliner off his face. Sadik takes exactly two and a half minutes to decide to follow him. He hovers outside the door. He probably doesn't want to cut off Herakles' exit; Sadik's learned how much more vicious he can be when trapped by now. The hallway is too small for it to work.

“Just come in and talk to me if you won't leave,” he snaps after a moment, and Sadik does.

“Where were you?” he asks.

There's no actual jealousy or anger in his tone, but all the memories of those words from Sadik write them in anyway. “At church,” he says, _not_ defensively, and bends into the mirror. One eye is actually clean now.

“Oh,” Sadik says.

“Why are you here?” Herakles asks again. “I didn't invite you.” The second eye is clean. He takes out the earrings he forgot to remove this morning. (This is the last time he stays out until five am the night before he has to be somewhere respectable.) Exits the bathroom.

Back in the kitchen. He's grateful he didn't throw the coffee mortar at Sadik, because he doesn't have another one. He goes back to grinding the beans while he waits for Sadik's answer.

“I wanted to see you,” Sadik says.

“Obviously.” Herakles raises an eyebrow.

Sadik shrugs. “Nothing special. Tayyip's being an asshole again and I was sick of thinking about work.”

“You have more than one friend, you know,” Herakles points out. “Some of them even punch you less than I do.” The 'some' isn't sarcastic. Mohamed doesn't usually _hit_ people, but his aim with dishes is wicked. And Armenia threatens to slit Sadik's throat on a regular basis.

Sadik shrugs. “No one else to talk to like you, though,” he says roughly.

The honesty makes Herakles uncomfortable. Whatever they are to each other now – sexworker and client paying in political concessions, ex-spouses, friends with benefits, who knows – it isn't that. Not anymore.

His fingers curl around the pestle like a knife, but if he wants to stab Sadik he'll have to actually open the cutlery drawer. Herakles eyes it and decides it's too far away.

All of a sudden, the absurdity of the situation hits him. Sadik hasn't hit him today. He's not threatening to beat him or kill his people. Herakles is standing here thinking about stabbing him with a kitchen knife for – what? Telling him he misses his conversation?

“Then talk,” he says and goes to start heating water. “But first, Sadik?”

“Yeah?”

The hope on Sadik's face is painful to look at. Herakles turns away to finish so he doesn't have to see it. “If you want to be friends, next time I tell you to get out of my apartment, you don't wait for me to hit you. You fucking leave.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a mere six or seven months, the second chapter! Well, I did say I didn't know if it would be updated. Main summary has been changed to reflect that this is now a WIP. All chapters will be fairly self-contained since I have no idea what the update schedule will look like.
> 
> In this chapter, Egypt makes an appearance, Herakles and Sadik speak civilly, and I mutilate Easter theology. The thematic but non-sexual R rating continues.
> 
> Please note that the opinions of the characters about subjects including but not limited to religious subjects, sexual ethics, politics and stupid nationalist jokes are not necessarily the opinions of the author.

Herakles does not hide from church, but his sleep cycle takes a convenient turn for the worse and he finds himself unable to get up in time for two weeks running.

He has a neat chain of logic stitched out in his mind about why this means he has to switch parishes, because the priest will _think_ he was hiding, until it occurs to him that Holy Week is very soon, and he probably will not have time to be in good confessional standing at a new parish before Easter. Dammit.

On Lazarus Saturday, he goes back. Aware of how awkward it is going to be if the priest catches him alone and tries to have another conversation, and naturally mindful of causing distress to his people, he decides not to go alone.

That does leave the question of who.

He could ask his landlady. On the other hand, his landlady has been patriotically ignoring his inability to pay rent consistently for some time – ever since the government became unable to pay him – and so he doesn't want to prevail on her for another favor. Also, if the priest said something anyway it would be awkward.

That also rules out most of the available Balkans. If Serbia is angry with him he won't come, and if he's not he might end up angry with the priest. He doesn't want to make Albania cry again. While Romania  _professes_ to be a churchgoer, Herakles doesn't want to force him to prove it, being somewhat concerned that he might burst into flames or something crossing the threshold.

At this point he stops going down the list of current Orthodox Nations and calls the person he really wants to see, which is Egypt.

Mohamed shows up at his apartment door in less than ten minutes.

It takes Herakles another twenty to get dressed. “You remember how everything works, right?” he asks for the third time. “They've changed some of it.”

They've changed a lot of it, which is the inevitable way of religion and ritual. Some times he fantasizes, in his head or out loud to Mohamed or  _very_ occasionally to Serbia about how some day people will know about Nations, and he'll write a book or something about all of the things the Church changed and lied about later. Of course, no one would believe him, but it's a rather nice fantasy.

“I remember,” Mohamed said for the third time. “I've been since they changed it, it's polite.”

Mohamed has fewer Christians every century, lately every decade. Herakles wonders when it will stop being a necessity for – courtesy, at what percentage of the population that will no longer be necessary. Even now it only applies to Oriental Orthodox Christians, not his remaining Greek Orthodox.

He remembers when Mohamed was baptized. (Of course, he wasn't called Mohamed, then, but if Herakles allows himself to slip inside his head, he will start slipping out loud, and that will be untactful for many reasons.) Mohamed – Egypt – belonged to him, then.

Eastern Rome: him and his mother. Naturally. Herakles would not expect to hold an empire without her.

They have been apart for so long, but Mohamed still knows him better than perhaps anyone else, and for this reason he has not commented on the fact that Herakles is acting like a nervous child about something he has done every year for well over a thousand years.

He should probably tell him eventually. He waits until they are on the way, walking, to say, “The last time I was in confession the priest asked if I was a prostitute.”

Mohamed raises an eyebrow; only the slight creases in his eyes and an odd angle of his lips lets Herakles know he is trying not to laugh, in case Herakles is upset. “What did you say?”

“I hear it's a sin to lie to a priest,” Herakles says.

“Are you afraid he's going to castigate you?” Mohamed asks.

Herakles shakes his head, squeezes Mohamed's hand, and takes a moment to be grateful that both of them are dressed acceptably for church. The affection is fine  _here_ , fine at his home or Mohamed's, it's normal, but any other hint might make it suspect. 

Church means they must be dressed acceptably, and so there is no other hint.

In a way it's a relief to be with Mohamed in public without worry about harassment. Herakles will blend, most of the time; for Mohamed it is painful. Herakles wouldn't ask Mohamed to take off his jewelry merely for him; it's bad enough when he  _has_ to, when he comes over crying or deliberately not, or Herakles calls him over, and they make deliberately bad jokes about police crack downs and spend the night wondering who of the friends who could not step out of the cell though the wall and straight into another city will not be coming home tonight.

Homosexuality is legal in Greece now, he reminds himself. Nominally. It will take a while and more substantial social reform before he is accustomed to the fact. He knows this from experience. More dangerous is the period of adjustment when it _ceases_ to be acceptable.

“I've been gone for two weeks and I'm afraid he might apologize,” Herakles says, turning his mind back to the manner at hand. “Thank you for coming.”

“It's no trouble, of course,” Mohamed murmurs, opaque as always. Herakles can tell he means it by the way he allows his arm to brush against Herakles as they walk, and the way that when Herakles takes his hand, he squeezes back without nails.

Herakles always forgets how much he misses Mohamed, when they're apart.

The services are unremarkable. At the end, the priest makes an attempt at bearing down on them. When he rushes it has a headlong air on it, like a child. Herakles catches a brief memory, then, the ones that sometimes come upon him around his people, of a redheaded child rushing down a hill, years before the child became this man in front of him.

That would be... 2004, the year the government changed, and the reminder of how _young_ the priest is, how young all of his people are, is enough. Herakles casts a repressive glance at him, watches him stop in his tracks, and manages to sweep imperiously from the room and the priest and the potential for a difficult conversation instead of fleeing them.

Mohamed watches the entire thing with a distinctly amused air, but doesn't comment.

“You'll come to dinner?” Herakles says a block later.

Mohamed pretends to consider. “You aren't following the fast schedule this year, are you?”

Herakles shrugs. “It would make work awkward.” Diplomatic dinners are not meant for the religiously observant.

“It's just that I had enough of your cooking without olive oil or dairy before.” Mohamed's smile is almost microscopic; Herakles feels it more than he sees it.

“I almost asked Romania, you know,” he says abruptly.

“Oh?”

“The thought just occurred to me, how do you think he fasts?”

“I suppose blood doesn't necessarily constitute a meat.”

“It _is_ an animal product, however.” Herakles' lips curve up.

The discussion gets them all the way to Herakles' building the normal, human way as they progress from the technical details of the fasting rules to their theological meaning and the related implications of vampirism.

Inside, Herakles suggests that they could wait until midnight; oil, along with fish, is permitted on Palm Sunday.

“Aren't you meant to wait for communion to eat?”

“I think they meant that for people who sleep at night,” Herakles counters, and Mohamed laughs.

“I thought you weren't following the schedule, anyway. You could convert,” Mohamed suggests lazily, folding into a chair with the sloppy grace of one of Herakles' cats. “Ramadan would be effortless for you. You'd only be awake two or three hours before you could eat.”

Herakles laughs. “It would please Turkey beyond words.”

“Never mind, don't dare. We wouldn't want that.”

Herakles glances up, somewhat worried Sadık has done something _else_ now, but there is no real bite to Mohamed's tone; this is only habitual acrimony.

“The government would have to give me up in a population exchange,” Herakles says as he goes to the kitchen. “It would make diplomacy very awkward, and who would Turkey send back? Coffee or tea today?”

“Coffee, I think, unless you have mint for the tea.”

“Turkish or--”

“No, don't call it that. He's a nomad whose only claim to a culinary tradition is in dairy products. We're here, it's _your_ coffee.”

A rush of affection hits Herakles. He turns away to start the water boiling. “So Greek coffee?”

“Mhmm,” he murmurs. “Naturally.”

 

A week later he is waiting for the midnight service on Easter and has a predicament. He could call Mohamed, but his friend has a distressing tendency to uphold a daytime schedule like a normal human being, and the work week begins on Sunday in Egypt.

So he goes alone. As it happens, the services are fine. The priest is, of course, occupied with the holiday. Herakles is happy to release his pragmatic agnosticism for a few hours this once, every year. Pascha, the return of hope, the resurrection of Christ, the redemption of humanity.

Every year since he ceased to keep the fast, he expects the holiday to be somehow diminished. What is hope without its prior absence, after all? What is light without the darkness? What is life without death?

Every year, the procession and the candle light and the singing – the release of it all – is enough. Perhaps it is the magnification of his citizens' joy in him; perhaps it is that his every day life has become so exhausting again that he needs no further reminder. Perhaps it is that he has experienced enough misery for a lifetime in the years past.

He leaves the church filled with _belief_ as he is at no other time. Belief in what, he still cannot say. Perhaps it is God, perhaps it is his people – for in what else can a Nation believe? -- perhaps it is simply belief that hope is returning to the world, _can_ return, still exists to return. Perhaps that is what he lacks.

Perhaps it is hope, what he feels when he returns to his apartment. Perhaps he was influenced by the doctrine of universal redemption inherent to the holiday. Perhaps it is only loneliness, wistfulness, nostalgia – those weaknesses which he would normally conquer with things inappropriate to a major church holiday.

He does not want to go to sleep, and he does not want to go out and lose the feeling of light, the sensation of greeting the hesitant flames in the darkness with song. He does not want to sit in his apartment by himself and read a book for the tenth or twentieth time.

Instead, he looks for his phone, and again he goes through the pretense of ruling out Nations – Serbia, whose anger is too exhausting for a day like this; Hungary, who retained absolutely nothing of communism besides the Soviet atheism and will probably say something snide and then make things worse by feeling guilty about it; Israel, who probably won't even remember Herakles has a holiday but _also_ has to work in the morning. (Or does Israel have the day off because of _his_ holiday? He can't remember and doesn't care to check.)

Then he finds the number of the person he unaccountably wants to talk to.

To Sadık, he sends a text: “Hey. Are you awake?”

The fact that Sadık answers him a scarce three minutes later is a warying tale of devotion. “No. What's up?”

He has the words “Will you come?” typing into the messaging window and is about to hit send before he reconsiders.

There is some part of him that wants Sadık to prove his devotion, over and over. This is the part of him that is aware, in a graphically visceral sort of way, that if he were not Greece, if he were a human who wore makeup and had a habit of going home from the wrong sort of club with apparently older men, who had no relatives to speak of, whose emergency contact was his landlady--

If he were human and turned up dead, no one would particularly care, is the thing.

Sadık will always care.

He knows this in the part of him that knows that if he calls Sadık in tears, or just with the right tone of voice, if he lets him see the empty cabinets in his kitchen and tells him he wears his army jacket to meetings because it can be patched without drawing attention to the holes, he will have everything he could ask for. At one time he had enough gold and silver jewelry in his room to finance his own private army. Sadık is generous when he is happy.

And that would be the price: making him happy. What that entails – well, perhaps Sadık is too modernized, too aware of his old mistakes, to ask for obedience. But that was never the difficult part of belonging to him. The necessity of the seamless facade wore him down. Always being available on a moment's notice, for sex or conversation or anything else Sadık wanted. Calculating every word, every movement, every _facial expression_ to make sure that it would not interrupt the fantasy. Giving just enough life, personality, resistance to feel real – and never a drop more.

He can do it for a limited time, and when he is on a _diplomatic dinner_ with, say, France or Denmark or most of the other EU members he will. They all know it's a fantasy and when he goes home for the night it is alone, to his own bedroom, and the act is over.

It took a revolution to extract himself from Sadık last time, and Mohamed told him that it took decades before Sadık stopped expecting him to come back.

Even now, some part of Sadık expects. Some part of Sadık is waiting breathlessly for Herakles to call him, to welcome him back and kneel at his feet like a runaway _pet_. Worse, some part of Herakles wants it – wants at least his protection. It would be so easy to fall back into that act.

And so even in small ways, he will not ask for it. He will not manipulate Sadık with the ghost of that facade.

He texts back, “Sorry to wake you. I got back from church and wanted company.”

“It's the middle of the night?” Sadık says.

“Easter.”

“I can come over if you want, sure, if you don't expect me to be awake.”

“I'll make coffee,” Herakles says.

“See you in fifteen,” Sadık answers.

It is Easter, it is supposed to be a day of joy, so Herakles doesn't try to crush the dizzying rush in his stomach. Sometimes he is as bad as a teenager with a crush around Sadık. At least it's a distraction from the melancholy of his thoughts.

He gets up from his seat on the bed and starts to cast around for clothes to change into; church clothing would feel strange around Sadık, but more unsuitable is his dress for private. In the end he pulls on jeans instead of sweat pants, and a ratty button down goes open over the T shirt to cover his arms and the back of his neck. (Because he is in a good mood and because it is Easter and because he does not want to fight with Sadık today, he barely spares a thought for the tattoo and scars he is hiding.)

Because this is _sort of_ a date he puts earrings in, but it's past one AM and they won't be going out so he leaves the makeup off.

By now he has only a few minutes left, so he goes into the kitchen to start the coffee. Several cats follow him in hopes of food; he picks up the gray tabby before she can trip him and pets her absently before transferring her to his shoulder.

“No fish today,” he tells the cats. “Maybe Tuesday.” Monday night he is supposed to have dinner with China. Instead, he puts out the last of the dry food from the pouch in the cabinet.

The cats are not really his the way people assume, and so he tries not to feel bad about not always being able to feed them. His strays are attracted to his house, by the food he puts out – used to put out – regularly and perhaps simply by his affection for them. He allows them in, cares for them as well as he can and allows them back out when they decide to leave.

He does not name them. They have their own names, as much as cats do, names that are not in human languages. They do not need him to tell them who they are.

When he's done feeding the cats the water is boiling, so it's time to put in the sugar. Sadık likes it very sweet, the way he likes all of his food. Perversely, Herakles adds only a small amount; he prefers coffee bitter.

The motions of making coffee, familiar to him for centuries if not the two millenia of his whole life, are comforting. He does not feel the twitch of _foreign intrusion_ when Sadık moves from Istanbul to his city – only a sense of pleasurable surprise that he has appeared _not_ in the apartment but in the hallway. He even knocks.

Perhaps Sadık has learned from last time. Perhaps he continues to learn. Perhaps they all do, and Herakles can allow himself hope that this time will be different.

He takes the coffee off the stove and goes to answer the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Holy Week](https://orthodoxwiki.org/Holy_Week) in the Orthodox Church and the [Easter fasting rules](http://www.abbamoses.com/fasting.html).
> 
> Those of you who are Roman Catholic may be wondering how Herakles is in communion if his priest knows he is gay and not abstinent. There is no universal ruling on this subject in the Orthodox Church; while communion might be denied in many churches, there are some where it would not be, or where the priest might attempt to dodge having to deal with the issue by instructing parishioners that they should not confess things they do not believe are sins. While many Orthodox countries are very socially conservative right now, Herakles' priest is liberal.
> 
> The vampirism jokes about Romania are not particularly in keeping with (themselves inconsistent) traditional vampire legends, in consistency with their tone in canon.
> 
> [Christianity in Egypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Egypt).
> 
> Work weeks vary some between countries. Many Muslim countries, including Egypt, work Sunday to Thursday and leave off of work Friday, traditionally the day of prayer. Turkey is largely secular and Westernized in government and works Monday to Friday. In Israel, the weekend is Friday-Saturday because, again, that is the date of the Jewish shabbat, although many people work part of the day Friday before sundown. (Regarding the holiday, Orthodox Christian Easter and Jewish Pesach are around the same date, although Herakles doesn't keep track of Pesach's date closely.)
> 
> Regarding coffee, yoghurt, and the relative complexity of Turkish cuisine, virulent debate over the origins of certain cultural foods is common in the Middle East and Mediterranean regions, and I'll leave it at that.
> 
> [On population exchanges](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/books/review/Cooper.t.html?_r=0).
> 
> [The theology of Orthodox Easter](http://www.antiochian.org/lent-pascha-journey-people-god).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No special warnings for this chapter; heed the main warnings about PTSD and past domestic abuse.

Herakles wakes up slowly, inches at a time. He becomes aware of the arm flung across his hip first. The cat tucked against his chest. The sunlight filtering in through the windows and warming the room.

The cat gets up. He focuses distantly on its footsteps, the sound of its jump to the floor.

The person in the bed with him yawns and pulls him tighter against his chest, tucking his face against Herakles' neck.

It's the bristles of Sadık's sideburns prickling the soft skin on the nape of his neck – the left, the unscarred side – that brings him from sleepy contemplation to abruptly, violently alert.

Herakles' heart rate skyrockets. The iron control of centuries allows him to keep himself still, hold his breath steady and slow.

Sadık doesn't seem to wake. He lets out a long breath and settles himself again, going still.

Still, Herakles waits. He counts to five hundred, breathing slowly until his heart rate has mostly calmed, before he moves. Slowly, carefully, he unwraps Sadık's arm from around his waist and shifts it over. He counts to five hundred a second time, until he is certain Sadık did not wake, before he slides from his arms and leaves the bed.

He wants to flee. His instincts tell him to scoop his clothes from the floor, tuck them against his chest and step away, at least a country away, to get dressed in safety. Last time they woke like that, body to body, with Sadık's face in his neck and his erection pressed into Herakles' thigh, he had tossed off the silk sheets – _silk,_ still, true that Turkey doesn't currently have Europe's economic difficulties but Sadık is ridiculous – and gone home to wash the blood out of the scratches on his hips and the dried semen off of his legs and the sweat off of his skin in peace, away from Turkey.

This time there is a problem with that plan, of course; they are in Herakles' apartment. He has nowhere to flee to.

In lieu of another city, he takes shelter in the bathroom and locks the door. It's a relatively futile gesture – a flimsy piece of ply board will not stop Sadık, he needn't even damage it to cross the barrier but he _could_ rip it off its hinges barehanded – but hopefully a psychologically effective one.

He sinks to the bathroom floor and begins to inventory his body – the usual check – when he realizes: nothing has changed about it.

Oh, his hair is a mess and one of his earrings was lost in bed last night while he slept – he'll have to find it when he comes out – and his shirt is twisted around awkwardly, but that's all. There are no bites, no scratches, no soreness.

They didn't have sex last night.

The thought is so utterly implausible that Herakles frowns, closes his eyes, and begins to review the memories to be sure he is correct. Sadık came over, Herakles served him coffee. They bickered over who it belonged to – an argument so old it has ceased to have real meaning for either of them – and Herakles told him next time he came over he would serve him _Arab_ coffee, with cardamom; Sadık laughed.

They talked, mostly. He remembers discussing politics – Sadık's border concerns, Herakles' economy and the steady dwindling of hope for a solution, that terrible refugee deal. A moment where the conversation had left bickering and risen to shouting, and--

And Herakles had turned away before he said something unforgivable for the twentieth time, and Sadık had excused himself and gone out on the balcony to sit with Herakles' drying laundry and when he had come back, they had talked about something else.

Herakles rests his head on his knees and has to breathe, slowly, thinking about it.

They had moved on to other things, trivial things – the books they read recently, their football teams, who was likely to win in Eurovision this year. Eventually they had moved to the bedroom, why Herakles can't remember, and they had kept talking and fallen asleep.

He remembers that he kissed Sadık, sitting in his bed with the lights out, and that Sadık had returned it without pushing for more.

Not even a punch thrown the whole evening. Virtually impossible.

He can't analyze it and come to any conclusion that is good for him, so he doesn't try. Instead, he gets up and turns the shower on.

The hot water pounding down on him gives him the relief of a quiet mind, but only temporarily. As much as he tries to distract himself with the ritual of daily ablutions, they do not require heavy thought. As he is washing his legs, the thought comes to him – should he shave? Sadık prefers it, he always did when they were together – and from there there is no stopping the cascade.

Sadık did not press for sex and he has no new bite marks and they talked for _hours_ without a real fight. When he got angry he didn't so much as shout, let alone get violent; he just left and came back calm – and Herakles _wants to believe_. He wants to believe in it so badly he can almost taste it, hope is a physical thing in his chest swelling and pushing to take him over entirely. If he is not careful it will take him out of the shower and into the bedroom and back into Sadık's arms at last.

He _wants_ it to be true, but the taste of bitter experience tells him it is not.

He remembers the first time Sadık hit him like it was yesterday; the whole week is seared in technicolor, vivid glory in his mind. It will probably remain there until the world ends, until there is no more Greece for Herakles to exist to remember it.

He remembers the pain, yes, but that is a trivial, passing thing. Mostly, he remembers the confusion – his own, because that did not _happen,_ things like that were not supposed to happen, not with Sadık, who was safe. He remembers the tears – Sadık's.

It had taken less than five minutes for Sadık to go from furiously storming into the room to sobbing, his head in Herakles' lap. Naturally, Herakles had forgiven him.

Naturally, it had been the first time, but not the last.

So they have done this before. At times, Sadık has given the illusion of learning, even, not merely of repentance.

Still, it has been a long time since then – Herakles has stayed away for long enough – so maybe, _maybe_ \--

He wants to believe.

He gets out of the shower.

He could get dressed in yesterday's clothing, which is unfortunately all he has in the shower, but such a gesture seems unnecessarily defensive, exposing how nervous he was. As it is, he could plausibly have simply woken before Sadık – not typical, but it _has_ happened – and decided to get dressed.

It is generally a bad idea to expose weakness in front of a combatant.

Is that what they are? He doesn't know.

He wraps a towel around his waist and carries the clothes back into the bedroom.

Sadık, to his surprise, is gone. Perhaps all that panic was for nothing; perhaps they have merely traded roles, and it is Sadık's turn to rush back to Istanbul and pretend the night never happened.

Herakles finds he is not pleased by the thought of Sadık having left. He irritably wishes consistency on his emotions, as though it was possible, as he dresses and dries his hair.

When he arrives in the kitchen, he discovers he was wrong; Sadık is there, adding eggs into a pan of peppers.

Herakles frowns. “When did you learn to cook?” he asks, instead of trying to remember if he has eggs Sadık has used the last of.

“You need to go grocery shopping,” Sadık says instead of answering. “Had to grab stuff from my place to make breakfast.”

Herakles relaxes, which annoys him; he should not be relaxed around Sadık. He can't kick Sadık out and eat the food, but there are plenty of people he would theoretically rather accept breakfast from in exchange for his conversation.

This is of course why he sits down at the table and tucks his feet under himself, allowing Sadık to serve him. Wasn't he thinking last night about being as bad as an adolescent?

Worse, really; he had the sense not to fall in love with Rome.

Sadık talks as he cooks, the sort of thing that passes for small talk among Nations; office politics carefully stripped of any context that might turn them into politically useful information, the tourist industry, archaeological digs that he's excited about and their hilariously wrong interpretations -- he has to be careful, here, because of course anything from the Ottoman period is sensitive and anything before that has the risk of reminding Herakles of when Sadık's land was _his_ , but he does manage it with surprising skill.

Herakles is frankly impressed he's finally learned. Empires don't tend to be wonderful at tact; they don't have to be. Sadık may be eight hundred years old, but he has been an ordinary Nation without the power to simply force anyone he disagrees with to go away and stop arguing less than a century. In those terms, he isn't doing so badly.

He doesn't say so, of course. He lets Sadık's chattering commentary on Turkish agriculture wash over him, like sitting in the place where water meets his land and letting tides soak him and retreat. Every so often he says a few words, agreement or commentary or simple acknowledgment, to let Sadık know he's listening.

All of it is very familiar, but at the same time, jarringly foreign. He can't think why for some time, until Sadık is setting down bread from his house and yogurt – always yogurt with him, Herakles reflects, it's like an addiction – and the menemen he was cooking when Herakles came in, other odds and ends.

It's funny. If Herakles had imagined Sadık learning to cook, he would have pictured grand roasts, meals flavored with saffron, the fare of royal feasts. Sadık always has to be the best at everything he does, after all, and he has no sense of proportion at all. But here they are, eating dressed up scrambled eggs, bread, a simple, domestic meal--

And that is when the sense of foreignness condenses into something Herakles can identify and name. This is a domestic scene, and Herakles has preferred them to courts most of his life. But even at its best this was not the tenor of him and Sadık. This is a scene from his friendship with Mohamed, various nights hosting or staying with Balkans, it could be Hungary cooking for him in her less warrish times, even his mother on her good days--

But never Sadık.

Once he identifies the source of the jarring note, it is hard to ignore. He finds he can't relax again and let the conversation happen; when he speaks he is prickly, not quite crossing the border of argumentative.

Sadık is obviously taken aback; he stops a few times. To Herakles' annoyance, he eventually asks, “Did I do something?”

Herakles has to put his face in his hands and breathe shallowly so as not to say what comes to his mind first. “No,” he says eventually. “Nothing.”

“I'm not stupid, you know,” Sadık says, and he is coming over, Herakles can hear him.

He flinches involuntarily and hears Sadık halt. He sees in his mind before he looks up the expression of puzzled hurt, slight offense, _C'mon, I didn't do anything..._

He looks up.

Sadık has turned away from him, is leaned over the table, collecting dishes. Herakles can only see part of his face; what he identifies there is not the staged mix of concern and offense of his memories, but only deep exhaustion.

It unsettles him.

“Just a bad mood,” Herakles says quietly to excuse it, and something automatic about his economy.

For a moment he hates himself with a deep, penetrating loathing; he can't leave Sadık and let them _both_ move on, but neither can he treat him honestly, confidently. He is still appeasing Sadık, even when he hasn't asked.

The guilt just makes it worse. He can't help caring about Sadık, and his instinct seeing people he cares about hurt is to try to take it away. The only way to stifle it is to cover it with anger and vindictiveness approaching sadism – and he's seen where _that_ goes.

“Yeah, okay,” Sadık says, relaxing slightly.

Herakles sighs.

One of the cats is rubbing against his legs. He leans down to pick her up; it's a young tortoise shell who arrived a few days ago and is so desperate for attention he is convinced she began life as someone's pet.

It's been a while since then, if so, and most of one of her ears was ripped off in some scrap. He strokes her cheeks very lightly and watches her rub into them, and feels Sadık watching him.

“What's his name?” Sadık says.

“She,” Herakles says, eyelids lowered so he can see only the cat. “Most tortoise shells are female. It's a genetic thing.”

“Sorry. Her name.”

He has never bothered to explain why he doesn't name cats to anyone else; he supposes Mohamed would almost certainly understand, but then, he has never had to explain anything about the cats to Mohamed.

“Imia,” he says impulsively, not looking at Sadık as he names the contested islands, and listens with mild amusement to Sadık choking.

“I – right, sure,” Sadık says. “Why not. Can I pet her?”

“If she lets you,” Herakles says dispassionately.

Watching Sadık attempting to lure the cat to the other side of the kitchen with a variety of kitchen scraps is funny enough to lighten his mind considerably. He smirks as the tortoise shell ignores scraps of eggs and bread, and her supposed name.

Eventually, lazily, he says “You could try meat.”

“You have some?”

Sadık is trying very hard not to be embarrassed, or rather, not to show that he is already embarrassed; Herakles recognizes the stubborn set of his jaw, the way he won't look straight at Herakles.

“I think there's some leftover ham in the refrigerator,” he offers lazily, and breaks out laughing when Sadık mutters a curse, shoots a vile glare at the cat and goes to look.

Whatever Sadık's distaste at touching it, the ham lures the cat successfully. She climbs into Sadık's lap, nibbles the meat from his hands, and promptly falls asleep, pinning him in place on Herakles' kitchen floor.

Folded against the cupboards, triumphant over such a small thing and still embarrassed, he looks very young to Herakles. It strikes him, then, that Sadık _was_ very young when they first met – younger than America is now – and that he has rarely seen this kind of behavior since then.

“Her name isn't really Imia, is it?” Sadık asks, interrupting his thoughts.

“No,” Herakles says freely. Momentary jokes aside, he doesn't want Sadık to think him so vicious and petty, to name a cat over a pointless land dispute that got some of Herakles' people killed.

Soldiers, over a flag on _uninhabited_ islands. Ridiculous.

He saves his grudges for more serious matters.

“She didn't answer it.” Sadık scratches her ears, and she yawns in her sleep and snuggles her face closer to his hand. “What it is, really?”

“She doesn't have one,” Herakles says. Surprisingly, Sadık does not argue.

He leaves soon enough, and Herakles is pleased enough by his behavior to kiss him before he goes. Sadık actually blushes, like an adolescent. Herakles finds himself hoping not just for further good behavior, but that his fall from imperial glory might allow him to become again the young man Herakles met first.

Nations are not people, not because they cannot be but because they usually are not allowed. Most of them have short, violent lives, drenched in the bloodshed of unsuccessful revolutions and temporary rebellions. When they grow, they become figureheads, good luck charms in battle or trophies to display in court.

His own early life was not like that, but only because it was replaced by something most likely worse.

Herakles sighs and goes to start the breakfast dishes. The tortoise shell cat twines around his legs.

A few weeks later, he receives a package from Turkey.

Curious, he carries it inside before slitting it open. It's small, lightweight, and Sadık would never risk delivering something expensive or fragile by mail.

Opening the paper, he finds a leather cat collar, clearly made of saddle leather – perhaps by Sadık himself – with bright, shiny metal fixings.

The tag is engraved: “Kardak.”

Herakles reads the Turkish name of Imia and bursts out laughing. It takes him a good five minutes to stop.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [That terrible refugee deal. ](http://www.migrationpolicy.org/news/paradox-eu-turkey-refugee-deal)
> 
>  
> 
> Some [Turkish breakfast foods](http://www.confusedjulia.com/2013/10/traditional-turkish-breakfast.html), including menemen (scrambled eggs with pepper and tomato.)
> 
> While canon is that Herakles was a child during the Ottoman conquest, I have ignored this because it makes no sense to conflate ancient Greece with Byzantium/Eastern Rome politically or culturally. I place Ancient Greece's death at the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, but Herakles' birth during Roman Greece. So, [Herakles' adolescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Greece).
> 
> Imia/Kardak is a pair of uninhabited islands who are the subject of a border dispute. You can read about the military crisis [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imia/Kardak#Military_crisis): it basically amounts to a bunch of literal special ops soldiers being sent out to change a flag by both countries, which would be a lot funnier if three Greeks hadn't died in a helicopter crash.


	4. Chapter 4

The table is set with the good silverware and dish set. Herakles wasn't sure until today whether Sadık still owned them; he hasn't seen either since 1821.

There is a chip in one of the plates where it was throw across the room in a fight with Spain several centuries ago. It isn't out; the table is set only for two, so the handful of damaged pieces can be safely hidden away. Herakles remembers, though.

The intimacy of this kind of knowledge disturbs him every time he is at Sadık's house. They are not married, are not together, are not _anything,_ and Herakles would like to forget the time when they were. This is difficult when every possession has a memory or twelve and brushing his hand over, say, the scratches in Sadık's desk top calls to mind the occasion they were put into it.

Of course, perhaps they are something again, because Sadık has asked him here – in advance, politely, with acknowledgment of the fact that Herakles might say no – and has set the table with the good dishes and silverware, and had the sense to order food instead of trying to cook it. When Herakles accepted he even had hope that it would be – nice, that it could be nice, instead of terrifying.

They have gotten through most of dinner without incident and all the way to dessert, except that Herakles' heart is going so fast his head is light. (He wishes Sadık was in the habit of serving wine with dinner. He drinks, but not with polite company. It's irritating.)

With effort, for maybe the fiftieth or sixtieth time, Herakles drags his thoughts back to the present, to the company and conversation in lieu of the circumstances.

“I'm not really into, uh, _food,_ ” Sadık said not fifteen minutes ago, in response to a joke Herakles barely remembers making.

Which is the most blatant lie Sadık has tried to pass off as true in at least fifty years, discounting the Turkish coups but  _definitely_ counting the stupid fucking economic negotiations. 

So Herakles takes vindictive pleasure in the way his eyes won't stay off of Herakles' lips, in the way he leans forward a little, obviously unconscious, when Herakles goes to lick the whipped cream from the kataifi off his hand.

Sadık is artless, utterly artless and can't spot guile unless it comes at him on a charger with a sword, or at  _least_ in the form of Iran. This is an embarrassing trait for an empire, particularly in the view of Herakles, survivor of a thousand odd years of imperial conspiracies. In a way that makes the effect he has on Herakles all the more infuriating.

One thing to lose a game against a killed opponent, entirely another to have his body betray him like this. Entirely another thing, to feel the way his own breath quickens and his pulse comes faster at Sadık encroaching on his space. To eye the coffee cups and know if he gets up to serve them more, he will have to turn carefully to conceal his erection.

Sadık does not know how to make this into a game. If Sadık was placed in the position Herakles was raised in, he would  _die_ , and Herakles takes some small comfort in that. At least Sadık has no idea of the victories he scores, effortlessly. Literally without effort or so much as the attempt.

Sadık's staring again, but the tenor has changed from open arousal to something more like concern. Herakles realizes he has been staring into space without eating or speaking for nearly a minute, and clears his throat.

It isn't like him to make this kind of mistake.  _None_ of this is like him, but then, the Herakles who exists around Sadık seems to be an entirely different person from the one he relies upon himself to be in the course of daily life. For one thing, in his ordinary life he does not fantasize about throwing dishes into his conversation partner's face as a means of resolving awkward silences.

“Sorry,” he said at least, a little breathlessly, and that at least is right. “Lost in thought,” he adds and takes the last bite of the pastry, half closing his eyes as if in appreciation. And yes, there, Sadık is leaning forward again; has spread his hands open on the table as though for balance, either in his body or his mind.

This could all go according to plan, or at least according to habit, if only Herakles could  _stop thinking_ .

“Thinking anything, uh, interesting?” Sadık says with spectacular timing. His voice is hoarse and he blushes when he talks, presumably to realize he's staring. It all reminds Herakles uncomfortably of when they first had sex, of before Sadık accustomed himself to _having_ and moved on to _taking_.

“I was considering,” Herakles says, wondering how he is going to finish the sentence, when his eyes fall on Sadık's barely-touched pastry. “I was considering when you said that you weren't _interested_ in _food_.” 

And there, with what is half an excuse and half an invitation to argue hanging in the air, he leans over the table to swipe Sadık's uneaten pastry.

“Hey,” Sadık says, laughing and leaning over as though to take it back. But he doesn't go to shove at Herakles' shoulder or snatch it away like he would bickering with, say, Azerbaijan or Syria.

Herakles isn't sure whether he's grateful that Sadık has learned not to present himself as a physical threat or insulted by the implications. Instead of thinking about it – as though he could make himself stop thinking about it, what is the problem with him today – he says, “You weren't eating it,” innocence laid on thickly enough even Sadık will understand he is being teased. Chin tucked in, head to the right and smiling a little, laugh as though you're trying not to; _this is just a game, play with me._

And if this was Constantinople and he still kept his old stores and Sadık was a candidate for Emperor Herakles didn't much like, he could make a teasing retreat, get up to get more coffee and put something more interestingly lethal in the bottom of Sadık's cup.

Why is he _thinking_ this? What's _wrong_ with him?

And that is always, has always been the question, hasn't it. What _is_ wrong with him. What is it that makes him as removed as a veiled daughter of the Emperor – Roman or Turkish, as if it mattered much – renders his gaze and body cool to absolutely anyone more appropriate, to any of a dozen friendly Nations including at one time his _wife_ , but holds him here, draws him inexorably and eternally to _Sadık?_

Sadık has done nothing unusual; empires are generally thoughtless and violent. It's Herakles, who can't seem to let it go, who is the odd one out.

Nations forgive and forget when governments change, and when the harm is personal they stay a little wary until enough time passes to let the pain ease. There is no point in holding grudges against people when they have little choice about their actions, when none of you do. They don't obsess over the pain of two centuries ago while simultaneously pulling themselves back into it.

His fascination is that of a moth entranced by the dancing light of an oil lamp. He knows this will end badly.

And he has stopped again, staring aimlessly into the table, which is not even one of the decorated ones they used to eat at to justify it. He would examine the plates but he knows their pattern too well for it to serve as a distraction. And his breathing is loud in his own ears, so loud he suspects Sadık can hear it too, and Sadık is--

At the other end of the room, apparently, pouring water. When did that happen?

Sadık comes back with it in what is simultaneously maddeningly long and far too little time, and has the _gall,_ the absolute audaciousness to ask, “Are you alright?”

“Am I,” Herakles says flatly, looking down again, staring down into the gold pattern set into the plates.

It occurs to him that this plate is worth more than everything in his apartment right now. His history is far longer than Sadık's, but he owns nothing from it. His apartment is rented.

Sadık's chair scraps as he pulls it out. ( _Artless,_ truly. Herakles wonders how long it has been since Sadık changed his dining room to the fashionably Western upright set up; obviously not long enough. He generally visits only the bedroom, these days.)

“Look,” Sadık says roughly. “Maybe this was a bad idea. If you want to go...”

Suddenly, like a revelation, the cloud of confusion and disorientation and panic in him resolves into something he can use.

He is _angry_ , breathlessly angry; every particle of his being seems to turn to rage until he can hardly speak, hardly think.

He waits until his throat clears to say, “A little late for that, isn't it? You should have tried it in 1821.” His tone on the words is perfect; polite, a little disinterested, so careless that no one would have any idea what he meant, if they didn't know. If they weren't there.

“Herakles,” Sadık says. His voice is choked with some emotion Herakles can't identify.

He waits for the release of the tension. His shoulders are ready to take a blow, his tongue ready to return a tirade. He reaches out and feels Athens, comfortingly present and sovereign; he is ready to flee as well. Whichever reaction is necessary, of the three.

Sadık's chair scrapes again as he gets up.

“I'll get the dishes,” he says. “Let me know when you want me.”

Herakles' mind goes blank.

He sits, frozen, as Sadık collects the dishes, one at a time. It takes him more than one trip – they have eaten quite a lot of food, and the dishes are fragile and shouldn't be carried in precarious stacks – and the entire thing is agonizing. He cannot relax, he cannot look up and risk meeting Sadık's eye.

At last, he's gone.

Herakles hears the sounds of housework, of Sadık throwing away uneaten bits of food and then water running. Most of the set is too fragile to be put through the dishwasher. Most of the set is too fragile to be eaten off at all; it should really be in a museum somewhere...

Most of Herakles' friends have regular house cleanings, after which they send carefully packed crates to national museums and international exhibits and sometimes obscure historical societies specializing in particular subjects. When these packages are delivered, they often receive phoned tirades from horrified curators at the careless storage and travel conditions, at which they shrug and say, “It was only holding up the table leg in the living room,” or “It's been fine in that trunk for the _last_ six centuries.”

Herakles has nothing. Everything he owned before 1453 was burned in the sacking of Constantinople. Everything he owned before 1821, he kept in Sadık's house. He and Hungary commiserate about it, sometimes; she never got her things back from Austria, either.

If things go very well for the next three hundred years, it is possible he will someday ask what Sadık did with his. It will not be today.

He has been sitting, still as a frightened rabbit, for far too long. Herakles gets up and circles the dining room.

Sadık must host business dinners here; the decor is too tactful. Sure enough, when he goes to the living room he sees the first and oldest of Sadık's remaining swords put up over the flat screen TV.

The anger is draining from him like water through a colander. He considers trying to hold it – anger is so comfortable insulation, promising emotional invulnerability if not the physical kind – but trying to hold emotions beyond their time is like trying to keep a fire alight by grasping the flames in your hands.

Like a fire, he could fuel it – but he finds he doesn't want to.

He's _tired,_ tired beyond all reason, beyond what an hour long dinner date on a day off should be able to do to him even with his interrupted sleep last night. It's not the sort of tired that comes from doing things, but rather the exhaustion of anticipation – of the hours he spent waiting for this date to begin, of the minutes spent with a white knuckled grip on his fork, conducting conversation like battle tactics.

Sadık is done with the dishes, and still, he is not coming after Herakles.

Herakles considers going back himself, offering apologies and at least attaining a chance to see Sadık is not angry in person, but the thought makes his shoulders tense again and his hands close into fists. He isn't ready for that yet.

He needs to stop thinking.

The shelves in Sadık's living room are filled with the sort of books people buy specifically for their matching spine height and color, to look at and not to read. Legal volumes, mostly; he checks one and discovers they're nearly fifty years out of date. It almost amuses Herakles – he would have thought Sadık would be offended by the pretentiousness. They don't offer much of a distraction.

That's okay. He knows where Sadık keeps his real reading material.

He finds the study, through the second door in the living room, down the hall and to the left. It looks much like it did the last time he was here, thirty or forty years ago, except that the typewriter on the desk has been replaced by a slim laptop. It's smaller than the typewriter, so he can see all of the deep grooves put into the surface two hundred years ago. Wires tangle on the floor by the desk.

The books here are a little more interesting – history, politics, _up to date_ legal books, a few cultural etiquette guides he presumably keeps for business trips. They aren't what Herakles is looking for, though.

He opens the desk drawer and fishes the key out of the empty pack of cigarettes, then kneels on the floor to unlock the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

Inside is exactly what he expected: the drawer is packed with romance novels. There are at least fifty here. Mostly gay pulp.

Sadık is so _young_. He keeps his sword on his living room wall, but hides these.

Herakles curls up on the floor with his knees to his chest, fishes one out at random, and opens it to read.

They're mindless things, fluffy and romantic and very nearly careless. (That alone is interesting. If you asked Herakles he would have said Sadık would like kidnapping fantasies, dubiously consensual ravishing – but no, that's spite speaking in Mohamed's voice in his head. He knows perfectly well what Sadık fantasizes about.

Also, Herakles is the one who reads the kidnapping fantasies. He knows it doesn't mean anything.)

What he wants right now is not to think about Sadık's fantasies, or the reasons he hides them. All he wants is a distraction, something mindless enough that he can just – read.

It takes fifty pages for the tension between his shoulders to ease. Another twenty-five and he is leaning against the desk drawers, curled loosely. When he reaches the end of the first hundred, he is sitting cross-legged on the floor.

When the sunlight coming in through the slatted blinds has lessened and it's dark enough Herakles would need to turn on a light to keep reading, he discards the book and starts back out of the office. The second he crosses the doorway of the office he forgets the leads' names. It's just not compelling. Probably shouldn't surprise him.

His bare feet make no sound on the carpeted hallway. He halts in the doorway to the living room.

Sadık is back – well, of course, he wasn't going to sit in the kitchen forever.

He's been reading too; it looks like a novel, probably left in his room or on a table somewhere. (Herakles takes a moment to be grateful he didn't come into the office, didn't trap Herakles in the small, single exit space.)

His reading glasses are on – when did he start using those? Herakles can't remember, has only a vague recollection of seeing them before when Sadık was doing paperwork – and he is biting his thumb nail absently, intent on the page. The late evening sunlight coming behind him turns him into a high-contrast portrait with golden edges. He looks... strangely peaceful.

He is, or pretends to be, oblivious to Herakles.

“Hey,” Herakles says softly, and his voice doesn't crack. “How are you.”

“Good,” Sadık says, looking up rapidly and fumbling to put down the book. “Are you okay now?”

Herakles could leave now, mumble a pleasantry and escape. Sadık will not follow him to Athens. He's sitting down, the book in his lap, too far away to reach Herakles quickly.

Herakles doesn't _have_ to stay.

“Yeah,” Herakles says slowly. “Yeah, I am.”

He walks slowly to the couch and sinks into it, next to Sadık.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's going on in Herakles' head this chapter is one of kinds of flashbacks that gets a lot less publicity -- the kind where you are intensely experiencing past emotions while triggered, without necessarily also experiencing the memories.
> 
> Spain and Turkey have not, historically speaking,[ liked each other very much](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman%E2%80%93Habsburg_wars).
> 
> [The Turkish coups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_coups_in_Turkey).
> 
> Economic negotiations: trade between Greece and Turkey is [actually going pretty well](http://www.dailysabah.com/money/2015/11/19/turkish-greek-trade-relations-on-the-move-despite-crisis), but Herakles is the suspicious type.
> 
> Turkey and Iran have [a pretty eventful history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turco-Persian_Wars) too.
> 
> Constantinople was a [dangerous place](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_usurpers) to be heir to the throne. It's also where we get the figurative sense of the word "Byzantine."
> 
> I couldn't find a good link for this one (it turns out if you google any phrase involving the word 'table' you get shopping links and tables of contents), but the upright dining table is a relatively recent and Western phenomenon; in many countries it's typical to use lower tables and recline or sit low to the ground while eating.
> 
> [The Greek War of Independence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence) began in 1821.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait - this has actually been sitting in my draft folder waiting to be edited for a while.
> 
> Additional chapter warnings: discussion of past child sexual abuse (not by Turkey) and witnesses not doing anything about it; canon characters having acted according with historical moral standards.
> 
> On a different note, this chapter references past Greece/Egypt. The fic isn't going to suddenly derail into being about a different pairing, but it's part of my timeline for the characters' backstory. Heed the "other additional tags to be added" note in the tags in general.

“And so, because she saved the city, Athena was chosen as its patron,” Herakles says. “They named it for her, and every year the women would weave a new tunic for her icon, with images showing her story – because the process of creating images on fabric was so elaborate, it took the entire year.”

“Must have been some tunic,” Sadık says, frowning over the fence at the remains of the Parthenon.

“It was,” Herakles agrees quietly.

Sadık frowns harder. “You're Christian.”

“I wasn't born that way,” Herakles says. “My name didn't reveal it?” He has a baptismal name, but he never became accustomed to answering to it.

“Your mother was kinda eccentric.”

“My mother,” Herakles says. “Was a die hard pagan who would have gouged her own eyes out before accepting baptism, and was horrified when I did – she said several times that she was concerned I'd lost my sanity, actually.”

“You never told me _that_.”

“When they converted it into a church,” Herakles says, staring into the marble rubble, “My mother wept. When the order was given she attacked the emperor--”

“Seriously?”

“It took Iraq – one of our provinces then, you recall – and I and two of the human guards to hold her back. She screamed until she went hoarse once she realized she couldn't get loose. Alternated between cursing us and calling the wrath of the gods down on us, and screaming that the city would be destroyed if we offended its patron.”

Sadık apparently isn't sure how to respond to this, because he stays silent.

Herakles walks farther along the fence, examining the tourists, and the pathway, and anything at all that isn't the ruined marble pillars above them. “By the third hour, she was begging Athena to spare her reckless, idiotic son. Possibly the nicest thing she ever said to me, though I'm not sure she actually remembered I was in the room at that point...”

“We don't have to be here,” Sadık says.

“I'm sorry?” Herakles glances up.

Sadık has followed him; is standing closer than Herakles had realized, just an inch or so behind him. His face is unreadable, but not impassive; if it was someone else, Herakles would say concerned.

“If it's just gonna upset you, we can go,” Sadık says. “I've been here before. Seen it already.

“I do recall your conversion of the Church of the Theotokos into a mosque.”

“See?” Sadık says. “It's upsetting you.”

“Perceptive,” Herakles mutters, and keeps walking.

Sadık falls back to follow him from a couple of feet away, like he isn't sure if Herakles would bite if he came closer.

Herakles sighs.

“I suppose you did give it back to us for a few decades, from the Latins,” he concedes as a peace offering. “Lunch?”

“That sounds great,” Sadık says.

“It was more interesting when you could go inside it, anyway.” Herakles slides his arm through Sadık's, elbows around several tourists, and takes the two of them through space to the street of his preferred restaurant.

He hasn't been here in a while, but the fact that Sadık will pay is an unspoken agreement that simultaneously relieves and rankles. If he is going to be bought, it will be for a high price. As per usual.

It isn't a peak business time, and things in Greece are perhaps a little less busy than usual anyway. Herakles is relieved by this, because this isn't such a formal restaurant that they would not be expected to share a table if it were crowded. Some conversations are meant to remain private – like most of his and Sadık's.

The lack of a crowd means that they are attended on unnervingly quickly. Herakles orders for them both without needing to look at the options – a pretense at hosting is all he can manage, but Sadık will allow him that – and soon they are left alone again.

Maybe he regrets the privacy after all, because Sadık is working himself up to say something. Given that he generally has all of the restraint and courtesy of a moderately angry bull, if he does not have the courage to blurt it out without thought it must be terrible.

Herakles wills the waiter to arrive with their food quickly. He wants to enjoy as much of it as possible before Sadık manages to ruin the meal.

“It's kind of funny,” Sadık says, finally.

I doubt that, Herakles thinks, meticulously smoothing his napkin.

“I've known you for so long,” Sadık goes on, inexorably, “But I don't know much about you, do I? I never thought about your name being pagan.”

Herakles shrugs. “It _is_ difficult to master the nuances of foreign names, and I believe I was one of the first Greeks you spent much time around.” This is not nearly bad enough to be the question Sadık is hurtling onward to.

“I guess.” Sadık glances surreptitiously at him before moving his napkin.

Herakles smiles a little.

Centuries, it's been, and Sadık is still uncertain of how the West – if Herakles is the West, if he is western enough to be West – eats. Or perhaps just how settled people do. A typical empire would assume his manners were the correct ones, but Sadık is insecure; Herakles recognizes it from the times he has been quietly asked about table manners in the process of serving Sadık with guests.

Aggravating when Herakles was a part of his household and hypothetically reflected upon by Sadık's manners, now it occasionally rises to the point of being... endearing.

“What did you want to ask?” he says.

“How old _are_ you anyway?” Sadık says in a rush. “I thought – you seemed young,” he says, stumbling over the words, “When I – when we met. But if you were born pagan – and they converted the church fifteen hundred years ago?”

Oh. Yes, Sadık would eventually have to wonder.

Conveniently, the waiter arrives at that moment with wine. Herakles wonders for a moment if he inadvertently summoned the young man – discomfort in one of their kind is sometimes all it takes to bring a sufficiently empathetic citizen to the rescue – but dismisses it as unanswerable. He smiles at the man instead, takes a second to ask about the dish delivered to the next table at that moment, which is new at the restaurant. A glance at Sadık for approval and some of it is ordered for them as well, and he has bought himself entire minutes of delay.

“You don't have to answer,” Sadık says, once they are again in relative private. “I mean, if it bothers you. I didn't realize it was an upsetting question.”

“Then why delay?” Herakles asks, then sighs at the way something flinches in Sadık's face. Sadık is _trying,_ he is trying so hard, he has perhaps finally learned what Herakles has never managed in two thousand years and figured out how to leave pain where it lies.

Unfortunately he is still inadequate in anticipating it before it is discovered in others, and Herakles has _not_ learned to leave well enough alone.

“I'm around two thousand years old,” he says abruptly, hand tense on the wine glass. “My mother said I was born the moment the Battle of Corinth was lost, which may be an exaggeration, but that was certainly the year of my birth.” He can tell Sadık does not understand the reference, so he continues as unemotionally as he can, “One hundred and sixty five years before the birth of Christ. The battle marked the beginning of Roman dominion over Greece.”

There. It's done. He picks up the glass and sips, belatedly remembers that he is _not_ obligated to pretend for Sadık, and drains half of it on the second swallow.

The level of liquid trembles as he sets it down, making little ripples that settle in a second or two. A little sea of wine; hazardous weather conditions indicative of an unsettled god.

His mother would have thought that was funny.

“I don't understand,” Sadık says.

“The calculation of the dates is simple enough,” Herakles says. “I thought you were more practiced than that with our calendar.”

The sarcasm is marred by the way he can't look up from the surface of the table.

“Not that,” Sadık says brusquely. “I mean – I didn't know. _Why_ didn't I know?”

“I regret to inform you that your perceptiveness is a thing of almost legendary deficit--”

“ _Herakles,_ ” Sadık says, and something in his tone is different; rougher.

He is, Herakles realizes with a beat of what might be terror or exultation or a thousand other emotions, actually _upset_ by this.

Well. He had been under the impression that age was not his main appeal to Sadık, unlike certain other parties -- Martial said _screw your own son, if you wish; it is not wrong_ , and Rome always _did_ wait breathlessly on the word of his scholars -- but perhaps Herakles was incorrect.

It _is_ odd that Sadık would bother becoming involved with him a second time if it was that all along--

“I thought you were _my_ age,” Sadık says, and Herakles' thoughts come crashing to the ground.

He looks up, involuntarily but as helplessly as if Sadık had cupped his face in one of his hands and moved his jawline physically.

Sadık is staring back, biting his lip, eyes a little too wide in a way that suggests he may be about to cry.

None of this makes _sense_. Herakles drains the rest of the glass of wine, which helps, a little. More helpful is the way the terror-exultation has spread from a single note through his body, giving his body a fuzzy feeling and his thoughts a distance that is both insulating and clarifying.

Sadık is apparently not going to speak without prompt.

Regretfully, Herakles provides one. “You thought I was your age,” he repeats.

“You told me – I mean, I guess you didn't.” Sadık squints, apparently reconsidering memories. “You implied it, though, you acted like everything I brought you was new. You told me your mother had handled the government, you were shy, and the first time we--”

Filled with a sudden awareness of the waiter's increasing proximity and the horrific premonition that Sadık is about to say _had sex,_ Herakles kicks him.

The next several minutes are excruciating. Herakles makes conversation with the waiter as a means of avoiding Sadık's face, about the economy – terrible as always – and the freshness of the seafood they are eating – excellent as always – and the lack of customers and the amount of time it has been since they saw him here. He forgets each word as it comes from his mouth or enters his ears, but instinct propels him.

Herakles finds himself wishing for a crowd, wishing for the restraining influence of five or six tourists or business people having a loud and enthusiastic conversation about football, so close that the two of them could not possibly continue discussing this subject.

No crowd materializes. Regrettable.

“This upsets you,” Herakles says at last, grateful for the ability to pretend he is preoccupied with determining the best way of eating his mussels.

“Of course it does!” Sadık says. “You're _twice_ my age--”

“Nearly three times, actually--”

“And I had no idea, and when we--” Sadık is _blushing,_ actually blushing, Herakles cannot believe he ever was intimidated by this man even as his heart is pounding in his chest-- “When we had sex the first time, I thought you were inexperienced. You _pretended_ to be inexperienced.”

“I take it that wasn't part of the attraction,” Herakles says, wishing that he could chance an unfortunate incident of eavesdropping and attract the waiter's attention for more wine.

Sadık actually puts his fork and knife down on the plate and stares at him, wordlessly.

Herakles apparently has made a mistake, there. It's been some time. Sadık is less a game than an extreme sport played professionally at risk of serious injury, but Herakles is accomplished at him. Still, no one is perfect.

Herakles will need to consult with Mohamed later, to determine what went wrong. For now, he waits for Sadık to speak so he can begin damage control.

“ _No,_ it wasn't part of the _attraction,_ ” Sadık says. “ _What the fuck._ ”

“I did get a sense of your tastes later,” Herakles says, now thoroughly mystified, “But I can't actually read minds, and empires are less likely to take offense at virginity than the lack of it.”

Sadık stares.

Herakles gives him a regretful look and takes another bite of food to give himself time to consider his next line. In his opinion, leaving him to pick up the conversation when he has no idea where Sadık intends it to go is rather unfair, but Sadık has never been wonderfully accomplished in conversational etiquette _or_ carrying his share of any given task. He considers in the process of swallowing.

In the end, simple is sometimes best. “I don't understand why you're upset,” he says.

It takes willpower to make it a simple statement, to look at Sadık while he says it; instinct tells him to lower his eyelashes, make his tone breathy, fold in on himself. He is certain that Sadık would stop asking after this line of thought immediately if he did – if there is anything Sadık loves, it is relenting, the beautifully forced relief that comes with others' reception of his unexpected mercy, his kindness in the face of their submission.

But Herakles does, actually, want to know what is bothering him this time.

Unfortunately Sadık remains wordless. Herakles waits, patiently, and finishes his wine, then refills his glass from the bottle.

“Okay,” Sadık says at last, which is not the most helpful way of breaking the silence imaginable, but perhaps he's still warming up. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “ _Why_ would you think I wanted that?”

Herakles blinks several times. “Well, it wasn't like you propositioned me the second you took Constantinople because you'd fallen for my brilliant intellect and scintillating dinner conversation. Though given the opportunity I'm sure you would have,” he adds magnanimously, and is relieved when Sadık laughs. “I was a trophy, Sadık, I wasn't – oblivious to that.”

“Okay,” Sadık says. “I mean, I'm sorry. Yes, you're right. What does that have to do with pretending to be less than half of the age you really were?”

Herakles shrugs. “When a patrician keeps a male servant as a sexual trophy, he generally isn't going to select someone older than he is. Certain things are part of that... occupation. I admit that most male concubines and dancing boys are retired before they reach twenty-six, let alone... let me think, sixteen hundred then, but that's mostly a function of plausibility.”

“Maybe try that again in simpler words,” Sadık says with a groan.

“Fine. Every catamite pretends to be a teenage virgin if he's sold to someone new. I never aged out of the ability. Ergo...”

Sadık is staring again.

Herakles has some more wine. If he had known how much he was going to drink tonight, he would have ordered a better vintage for them. And possibly another bottle.

“You were my wife,” Sadık says finally. “Not my – concubine, or--”

This is probably not a good time to discuss the intricacies of gender in connection with sexual performance.

“There isn't as much of a difference as civil society likes to pretend,” Herakles says dryly. “At least, there wasn't at that time. I _have_ done both, you can take my word for it.”

“Who?” Sadık says, sounding strangled again.

Perhaps there's something wrong with his throat. Herakles fills the untouched and empty wine glass by his plate, too.

“Rome,” he says casually, returning to his food. It really is very good, he shouldn't insult the restaurant by neglecting it. “Who else?”

“Rome. Right.” Sadık puts his face in his hands. “And you were how old?”

“Do you actually want to know the answer to that question or are you too horrified to stop asking?” Herakles asks. “I understand the attraction of a nice accident viewing, but I don't particularly enjoy being the wreck on display.”

Sadık winces. “Sorry,” he says, and picks up the wine glass

Good. Herakles can keep filling it. Sadık is a maudlin drunk, but he's much easier to steer that way.

“If it helps, you didn't snatch me from a previous master as I submitted helplessly,” he says idly. “I was five or six hundred when he died, and my mother and I ruled the eastern empire until, well, you.”

“I remember,” Sadık says awkwardly. “I just hate to think--”

“What?” Herakles says tiredly when it becomes apparent he needs to be prompted again. They are going to run out of wine, soon. A pity. The alcohol is the only thing that makes this performance bearable.

“That that was your only...”

“I was married in between, thank you,” Herakles says dryly. “My wife and I got along perfectly well and only parted on account of a certain cattle stealing barbarian we euphemistically refer to as 'Arabia.'”

“Your _wife,_ ” Sadık says, and drains his glass. “Since when did you have a wife? _Who_?”

“She was one of the North African provinces and I believe it is her preference that you know nothing else about it,” Herakles says, as a polite alternative to explaining a number of things Sadık has somehow managed to miss about her. (About Mohamed. Herakles will do him the courtesy of not slipping on his current name _or_ gender.)

“So she's still alive.”

“Yes, we get together on Saturdays to complain about you, it's a tradition.”

“You and half of the Balkans. I didn't realize you were even attracted to women.”

“I'm not.” Herakles shrugs. “We were friends. Are friends. It was my mother's idea – she apparently found the fact that I kept having affairs with my emperors somewhat embarrassing--”

“Oh my god you did _what_.”

“It was more pleasant than speaking to most of them,” Herakles says. “The conjugal portion of the marriage worked out about as well as you would guess, but we were – are – close in other ways. My main regret is inflicting my mother on an innocent woman who didn't have to live with us.”

His mother. The beginning and end of this mess. He wonders, sometimes, whether she knew what Rome wanted him for. Whether she cared.

“I guess,” Sadık says, shaking his head.

Herakles takes the opportunity to change the subject. He is emotionally wrung out; they can finish lunch with a more neutral topic. Perhaps the border disputes over the Aegean Sea.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The post-classical history of the Parthenon.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Later_history)
> 
> Which statue of Athena the robe was made for is ambiguous; historians have generally assumed the larger one because of the time of the task, but those historians were generally not familiar with details of the process of complex weavings, which might easily take a year. I tend to side with Elizabeth Wayland Barber ( _Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years_ ) at least on this subject, and agree that the references to myths depicted on the robe pictorially are probably accurate.
> 
> Herakles' name is a point of confusion among the portion of the fandom familiar with anything about modern Greece. The explanation I've given here is still dubious since I believe Herakles was not in common use as a name in the pagan era either, but it's better than nothing. Most typically, modern Greek given names are Orthodox Christian.
> 
> The [Martial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial) quote Herakles references is real; it's 6:39 as quoted by John Boswell. It's hard to say how common incestuous sexual abuse actually was in Roman society, but [adolescent boys were in general considered socially acceptable objects of sexual desire,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome) and all members of the familia institution were sexually available to the paterfamilias at least in theory. (Boswell, _Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe_ , footnote 47 on page 40.) 
> 
> Contrary to popular modern belief on the subject, abuse was _not_ the only expression of gay sexuality in the Classical world in particular or history in general. (See the rest of the above source.)
> 
> That said, Sadık would also be familiar with the concept of [adolescent male sexworkers in feminine attire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6%C3%A7ek), hence Herakles' reference to dancing boys.
> 
> The Arab conquest took [a lot of land from the Byzantine Empire,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Byzantine_wars) including Egypt. Prior to their imperial debut, the Arabs were regarded as backwater peoples and often under direct or indirect rule by the main empires of the region, Byzantium and the Sassanids, which colors Herakles' opinon of Arabia. (Hoyland, _Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam_ ).
> 
> [The Aegean Sea border dispute.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_dispute)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It hasn't even been six months this time. Amazing.
> 
> Chapter-specific warnings: Reference to Austria-Hungary and past abuse in the context of that relationship. Passing reference to homophobic assault. Somewhat oblique discussion of World War II.
> 
> As per usual, opinions of characters are not necessarily the opinions of the author (even if they're footnoted).

Erzsébet opens the door and beams at Herakles. “Hey, it's nice to see you! C'mon, come in, I have pastries in the oven.”

“Good day,” he says, following her inside and divesting himself politely of his shoes. He leaves the olive green military jacket on as he nearly always does around other nations; Erzsébet's seen the janissary tattoo before, knows what it means, but Herakles feels it is rude to remind others of past oppression. Even when the suffering was mutual. “It's nice to see you again, how have you been?”

“Up to my neck in shit, but that's politics for you,” she says, and regales him with several minutes of complaints about the current members of the Hungarian establishment before belatedly asking, “How about you?”

This is one of the things he likes about her; she isn't in the habit of policing etiquette. His, or her own.

He reciprocates with the complaints that have become his refrain; the economy, German banks, austerity – and so on. Erzsébet ushers him into her sitting room as they talk, then disappears to get coffee.

Herakles sits, obediently, and looks around the room, gauging how much it's changed since she was last here. The table and chairs are antiques, repaired in places he can just barely spot because he remembers finding them before; he believes they were purchased as part of Austria's gifts to her during the Compromise of 1867, with the house he gave her as a gesture of good will towards her independence – both political and personal. He apparently kept the furnishings for her through communism and returned them after, though the house is long gone.

A striking evidence of obedience in contrary to past behavior on his part. Herakles will have to ask Erzsébet how she accomplished it.

Well, that _is_ why he's here, in a way.

“The dogs want in, do you mind?” Erzsébet calls from further inside the house.

“It's fine,” he answers, studying the paintings on the walls. He recognizes one of them as Venice's work, of a street he believes is in Buda, not far from here, though the painting and view are old enough that a horse-drawn carriage is in view. The others are the work of artists he doesn't recognize, passable enough to look at. One, more interesting than the other, a somewhat abstracted dancer in folk dress whose red skirts flare around her, and the other a landscape. Hungarian artists, he supposes, with no real evidence beyond the dress in the one – but nations are nearly all alike.

One of the dogs rushes in and shoves its head against his knee. Herakles pets its ears; identifies it tentatively as Slavko – named after Serbia – based on the splash of white on its chest. It snuffles and whines, butting its head against his hand.

Erzsébet certainly has her idiosyncracies. But then, they all do, and naming dogs after escaped vassals and old enemies is less offensive than many other local examples. He wonders idly how she chooses which of the Balkans to name new puppies after.

Erzsébet lost her property, as he did. She spent centuries as vassal to Sadık and then Austria, and another forty or fifty years as one of Russia's block. Yet, she seems to be rebuilding nicely. She owns her house, and it's a decent size in a good location. Her furnishings are a collection of antiques and new purchases, all of those in a quality meant to last and become antiques in her possession. She owns dogs and horses both.

True, the house is fairly new to her if not new entirely. The oldest of the antiques are a little over a hundred and fifty years old, nothing that could possibly match Erzsébet's thousand plus years. The picture, overall, is clear: she is well on her way to moving past it all.

Herakles wishes, bitterly, that he could be so lucky.

He should have been. He's been more or less independent for longer than Erzsébet now, discounting the occupation by Germany and the subsequent meddling by America – but why should he discount it? Why, when he lost the house he owned to the Germans and his trust in his government and ability to work with them to America?

He used to have a job, he reflects, with a reasonable salary, and a home he owned, and money for the clothing and furnishings befitting an administrative official. Now he has a permanent inability to discuss certain topics with his leaders, an inability to look his ministers in the eye, and an economy in tatters thanks _once again_ to Germany. As for his personal status, the disciplined and capitalist economy of the present day does not make so many allowances for someone as damaged as him, with capabilities deemed... inequal.

No wonder he finds himself fantasizing, increasingly, about Sadık's embrace and care and wealth. He covers his expenses with contractor work for his government that is increasingly scarce as the crisis drags on, and the _gifts_ of other nations in return for his affections, and when that is unavailable, more explicitly contractual arrangements with humans. All of it is unreliable at best and leaves him going into a month with no idea whether he'll be five hundred euros over budget or that much in the red. At least Sadık is _consistant_.

Erzsébet has done much better for herself than him, yes.

The clatter of a tray set down on the table makes him jerk back into reality. “--Thank you,” he says awkwardly, uncertain if she's said something already that he should be answering.

Her smile is kind – she's nearly always been kind to him, at least when she isn't smashing a rifle butt into his face – and she gestures in the negative as she pours the coffee. “I didn't say anything, I didn't think you'd hear me where you were. You don't like it sweetened, right?”

“This is fine, thank you,” Herakles says, leaning over to take the coffee cup from her.

Erzsébet can make about fifteen different drinks out of coffee and has demonstrated this to him before, but he likes espresso. Anyway, it's difficult to relax and enjoy it when he knows it was developed to serve her husband. She likes to cook and bake on her own, but she told him once, drunk, that she learned to mix coffee drinks herself because Austria liked it, and Austria in a better mood was less dangerous. Herakles' appreciation of her coffee has not been the same since.

He takes a piece of the honey cake, and the sweetness is good with the coffee. He can't remember what she calls this pastry in her language, but he vaguely recognizes it as something he's eaten during diplomatic relations as a tourist thing. He thinks he saw it baked wrapped around a spit, and wonders how she makes it at home.

“I'm sorry I'm not very talkative today,” he says, realizing again that he's lapsed into silence.

“Oh, it's fine.” Erzsébet sips her own coffee. She drinks it with whipped cream in it, like some of the Balkans do, but nothing fancier than that for herself.

“The horses are doing pretty well,” Erzsébet offers after setting the cup down and taking her own slice of cake. “Natalya came over to see them the other day, and she might be interested in taking the new foal once he's old enough to be broken. Of course, he's so young it's hard to say what he'll be as an adult, but his parents are both good, sturdy horses, and his mother is pretty fast, too. I know I've been saying this for years now, but it's _so_ nice to have horses again, half my soul was missing in the Soviet years. Imagine thinking horses were just _property_...”

He lets her talk, interjecting comments occasionally, drinking her coffee and eating the honey cake. Both are excellent as always; for her skills as a cook alone, it's unbelievable that Austria didn't work harder to keep her happy in his household. As times goes on, he relaxes incrementally.

His relationship with Erzsébet lacks the effortless intimacy he has with Mohamed after two thousand years of shared life, but all the same she's easy to talk to. Erzsébet is straightforward and usually friendly, and when she isn't it's in the form of charging at you with a weapon, rather than conspiracy and manipulation. She would never accept someone as a guest and attack them on the same day.

He should come to see her more often. Lately, when they meet it's usually during one of the larger conferences his country still needs him for. They get an hour or two stolen away between meetings to drink coffee in a cafe and try to catch up on the complexity of nations' personal lives. It isn't enough time, when she's one of his few real friends – neither of them considered equal by Western or Northern Europe, but both held awkwardly distant from the Balkans. They are each unable to be a part of family bonds that were created, in part, by resisting them.

It's when she references Austria again -- “And I finally got Roderich on a horse again, I can't believe he argues about it so much when he gets tired so quickly walking; on horseback we got _miles_ out, I don't believe him that he's content to never stir from Vienna when he's so happy whenever I get him away,” -- that he remembers what he wanted to talk to her about.

“Can I ask your advice about something?” he says, turning his empty cup in his hands.

“Sure, sure, let me pour you more coffee.” Erzsébet deftly steals it from him, cruelly depriving him of his source of fidgeting, and refills it. “What's on your mind?”

“I'd like to ask something personal,” he clarifies, accepting the coffee back and sipping it to give himself a moment to compose his thoughts. Erzsébet _mhmms_ approvingly, and so when he sets it down he goes on, “About your remarriage to Austria. How did you...” _know_ , he thinks at first, but that isn't quite what he wants to ask. “Decide? To trust him again in the nineties, after everything that happened with him before?”

“Fuck, that's a hard one.” Erzsébet laughs, takes another bite of the cake before she answers. “I mean, if you're asking how I knew he wouldn't just go back to beating me, I really didn't. I can't see the future.”

Erzsébet is so casual when she refers to being beaten, as though the idea that it might embarrass her – that it might be a reflection of her, and not of Austria – has never occured to her. He wonders, every so often, why she stayed through it. She doesn't seem the type.

No one would ever ask that about him.

“You knew what had happened in the past, though. Why not take that as an indication of the future?”

Erzsébet purses her lips and sips her coffee. “It would have been reasonable of me, yeah, and I almost did. Still could, if I decide I'm not happy, and maybe it'll come back and bite me in the ass later, but... I mean, I knew he'd changed at least some.”

“Mhmm?” Herakles says. The bitterness of the coffee is a welcome distraction. “The house he bought you?”

“Not really.” Erzsébet shrugs. “I mean, it was a necessary first thing, that he'd allow me independence, that he'd meant it when he promised to, but it wasn't enough. We had to learn to work together again. He had to learn that he wasn't – doing me a favor, _letting_ me refuse him, that it wasn't anything he had the right to take away. It took a while. Herakles. This is about Sadık, isn't it?”

“Who else?” Herakles lifts an eyebrow, sets down his coffee cup.

“Do you _want_ to be with him?” she asks.

“It isn't that simple,” Herakles says, looking down, away from her eyes. “I think that I want to, but I don't know, maybe it's just that I miss being taken care of. You know how difficult things have been lately. And I can't figure out what to expect from him, and half the time I want to be with him so I'm close enough to _hurt_ him, and--”

“So break up with him,” Erzsébet says, cutting in through the stream of rambling.

“No,” Herakles says, inexplicably stung by the advice he's been seeking. He is an idiot, isn't he. Erzsébet really is more tactful than anyone credits her with, not saying so outright.

“So stay with him.” Erzsébet drains her cup and pours herself more coffee.

“Which?” Herakles frowns.

“Whichever you want to. I don't think you're going to find a right answer – I mean, there _isn't_ a right answer here, beyond doing what works for both of you. If it's good for you – whether that means you're more secure, happier, whatever – then stay with him. If he starts making you miserable, leave him. But you have to pick, you can't do both at the same time, you know?”

“That simple?” Herakles says, tired. “What if I get back together with him and it turns into what it was before?”

“He doesn't own Greece and I don't think he's particularly likely to invade you,” Erzsébet says. “Not when he's trying to get into the EU. No, I know, that's not really what you mean, but – of course it's a risk. It isn't like that's news to you. If it hasn't made up your mind, it clearly isn't the most important thing. You just feeel like it should be.”

Herakles sighs, stares into the dregs of his coffee cup. Erzsébet's particular brand of brutal honesty is what he thought he wanted, and it probably will be useful once his head stops swimming, but...

“Why did you marry Austria again, then?” he says.

Maybe there isn't a definitive answer, but he still feels like he should be able to find one if he squints hard enough. Like looking for the loophole in paperwork, or the error in a column of numbers.

“Because it's better with him than without.” Erzsébet leans over to check the temperature of the flask of coffee, rearranges the slices of honey cake still on the tray. “And family is important to me, and to him, and the rest of mine is far away. No one else really knows me like he does. I don't know, because it got so I'd come awake at midnight in Russia's house and cry because Roderich wasn't waking me up with that stupid fucking piano, is that a reason?”

Herakles can't help smiling. “I guess it can be. That's enough, though? That's your final answer?”

“Nothing's my final answer until I'm fucking dead, and Romania hasn't blown my head off yet, so no, but _you know_ ,” Erzsébet says. “Have another slice of cake, I made it because you were coming. If you don't eat it I'll have to call Gilbert or Natalya and neither of them has any damn taste.”

“I'd hate to leave your cooking to that fate,” Herakles says, and takes another piece.

Another dog trots in, puts its head on Erzsébet's thigh and gazes, longingly, at the table. Erzsébet murmurs something in Hungarian and digs out jerky from her pocket. The second dog, the one Herakles was petting earlier, immediately springs up. Erzsébet scolds it – _wait your turn,_ Herakles imagines she's saying, though he doesn't speak a word of her language.

She smiles at them anyway, the sun softening her face to something young and pretty. Herakles is unaccountably fond of her in that moment, frustrating as her advice giving may be.

He isn't alone without Sadık. He should remember that. There's Erzsébet and Mohamed; his birth family, too, Andreas – Cyprus – and Lovino, who was born Greek, founded by Greek colonists, before Latinization. They don't always get along, but then, what nations do?

The problem, he supposes, is that if he doesn't need Sadık, he has to decide whether he _wants_ him. But then, maybe he always had to do that, anyway.

Not a test, not a final answer, but a choice. An ongoing choice. This is going to be difficult.

“The coffee's getting cold, I'll go make more,” Erzsébet announces, springing up and exiting the room.

He knows from experience that the kitchen is out of earshot of her sitting room, and he'll have some time before she's done with the coffee. Enough to make a phone call, maybe.

Herakles takes his phone from his jacket pocket.

Sadık picks up after two rings. “Hello?”

“Hey, it's me,” Herakles says, and takes pause to appreciate the automatic way he says it. Over the past few months, he's gone from rarely speaking to Sadık politely to this – _it's me,_ no name necessary.

Perhaps he's deluding himself, and he already chose.

“Hey!” Sadık is audibly happier. Herakles wants to be resentful about that. “How are you, what's up?”

“Not too much.” Herakles closes his eyes. One of the dogs is next to him, and he reaches down, digging his fingers into its ears, comforting himself with the warmth. “I wanted to know if we could – talk.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Sadık sounds nervous, now. “I'll be done at work in a couple hours, you want to come over? We could go out, or should this be in private...?”

“Out, please.” Herakles suspects he will not have the nerve to broach subjects so potentially upsetting in private, with no witnesses. Though there are other considerations; he knows from experience how difficult it is to have a discussion about a relationship in public while worried that a passerby may randomly assault you. “Is there anywhere that we could go and – for instance, kiss in public, that isn't a bar?”

“Uh, yeah, I know a coffeehouse.” Still nervous, but pleased, too. “Is this a date?”

“Sort of,” he says. “I'd like to talk about things that – us, I mean. So...”

“Should I be worried?”

“Depends on your behavior,” Herakles says, dryly, and is relieved when Sadık laughs without offense. “I'll meet you at your place, then? What time?”

When he gets off the phone, his hands are shaking slightly. Dammit. He wouldn't have to hang in suspense if he'd waited until Sadık was off.

Erzsébet is hovering by the doorway. Apparently he didn't have so much time, after all.

“Good luck,” she says when he meets her eyes, and comes over to refill his coffee before she sits back down. “I hope things work out.”

“So do I,” Herakles says.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [German occupation of Greece](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_occupation_of_Greece) was devastating for the country.
> 
> Not helping the recovery was the Greek Civil War, between communist and nationalist forces. Backed by the West owing to fear of communism, the nationalists won, and [ a military junta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E2%80%9374) ruled Greece until 1974. [Resentment over American intervention ](http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/18/world/worsening-greek-us-relations-a-problem-with-deep-roots.html) continues to influence relations and the Greek view of the United States.
> 
> The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. 
> 
> Germany [has been accused of fiscal colonialism](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/opinion/euro-zone-fiscal-colonialism.html) over the EuroZone crisis.
> 
> On a lighter note, the pastry Hungary serves is [Kürtőskalács](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCrt%C5%91skal%C3%A1cs).
> 
> Incidentally, the thing about Hungary naming her dogs after the Balkans - or minimally, Romania - is [ canon](http://hetalia.wikia.com/wiki/Hungary).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter of _but deliver us from evil_ , and I want to thank all of the readers who have stuck through my wildly erratic update schedule. I appreciate all of you!
> 
> Chapter warnings: reference to ethnicity-based abuse in the past as well as general past domestic abuse.

Despite the Ottoman-era building, the coffeehouse turns out to be a European style cafe, serving both food and coffee to a disorientingly young crowd from a central counter. Stepping inside, Herakles feels a wall of conversation hit him like a slap in the face.

The patrons are gathered in small groups, arguing in some cases at the top of their lungs. Herakles could probably announce his sexuality at a shout in the dead center and be inaudible to anyone more than a table away. But that protection might be unnecessary. The woman behind the counter is obviously a lesbian, which makes Herakles feel better about his earrings.

Impulsively, he points out Sadık – sitting in the corner with a book, occasionally offering commentary on the chess game going on at the next table – after taking his order, and says, “Does he come here a lot?”

“Your boyfriend?” She looks at Sadık for a moment before answering, which at least suggests she's thinking about it instead of telling him what she assumes he wants to hear. “No, no, I've seen him a few times but always with that group in the back, the one arguing about Neo-Ottomanism. He comes in to talk about politics and drink coffee, if he's cheating on you it isn't here – good tipper, though.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” Herakles says and smiles at her, making sure to match Sadık's efforts there.

After escaping the hazards of the maze of tables, he sits down with a slice of cake and coffee. The coffee, he ordered habitually before recalling that he had drank a pot or more earlier at Erzsébet's house and it was already starting to make him unpleasantly jittery.

“Hey.”

Sadık smiles at him with shy nerves that make him appear at home, almost as young as one of the crowd of twenty-something liberals around them. “Hey. I hope nothing's wrong?”

“No, not exactly.” He takes a bite of his cake, trying to give himself time to strategize. He made himself work on a report about the impact of austerity on Greece's healthcare system until the very last minute, afraid he would change his mind out of anxiety or sabotage himself if he had time to think. As a result, he has come, but without a sense of what he's trying to accomplish, let alone what to say.

“I was talking to Hungary, earlier,” he says, settling on it because it is true.

“Should I be worried she's gonna charge in here with a broadsword?” Sadık says.

Herakles snorts. “No. Or if she does, it will be _entirely_ for the benefit of the barista.” Erzsébet may be married to Austria again, but as far as he knows she still spends a lot of time in the company of Belarus for a loyally married heterosexual woman.

“That'll be real comforting with a missing head.”

“Are you suggesting she would win?” Herakles asks, raising his eyebrows, and is rewarded with a laugh as Sadık shakes his head – no, of course not, he would never concede such a thing.

This type of conversation – not precisely easy, but uneventful, colored with affection and something as close to domesticity as nations can achieve – has become typical of them, lately. They still argue; there are still moments when Sadık has to leave the room, or when Herakles freezes with fear and fury in equal measure. But those moments have become the exception rather than the rule, and it has been nearly a year since the last time Herakles was driven to seriously threaten violence towards Sadık to make him get out of his apartment.

It will be Easter again soon. His attendance at church has dropped, as he has spent more time with Sadık and with Mohamed, and consequently been less lonely. Perhaps he should go back and reassure the priest – the young, well-meaning priest, one of a small but real effort to drag the Holy Orthodox Church into the modern era kicking and screaming as she is – that he didn't drive Herakles away with his questions.

Perhaps he should also have a talk with him about the most effective ways of intervening in personal situations, before he offends someone less durable than Herakles.

Herakles eats his cake, and watches Sadık drink his own coffee and then, at a soft invitation, Herakles'. He marvels at the fact of their conversation – at the fact that he is speaking Turkish now without resentment; at the stranger one that a few minutes ago he spoke Greek in Sadık's presence without fear, needing it to convey the nuances of a quotation and continuing for several minutes until another switch was prompted by Sadık's discussion of Ramadan preparations.

Before recent months, Sadık would generally feign non-comprehension if Herakles slipped into Greek; if they were in Greece, he spoke English or asked Herakles to translate in restaurants and shops. Before Herakles' revolution and subsequent liberation from Ottoman rule, but after the beginnings of rebellion brought on suspicion, a mistaken sentence had the potential to beget violence.

Now, when he speaks Sadık answers in the same language, all pretense that he does not understand gone.

He was right, earlier – not that he already has chosen in finality, but that he is choosing every time he spends time with Sadık. Likewise, every time Sadık greets him civilly, controls his temper and makes the dozens of small decisions that allow Herakles safety in his presence, he chooses as well.

“Can I ask,” Herakles starts, eventually. He is finished with his cake and both cups of coffee are gone, and the loudest peaks of the political argument behind them have drifted far from the current ruling establishment in Turkey through the war in Syria into the calamity that a male speaker feels is the popularity of Islamism across the Middle East today.

“Ask away,” Sadık says when he falters, waving a hand as though it is nothing. His eyes are intent on Herakles, crinkled with worry.

Herakles remembers that some five hundred and something years ago, he thought that Sadık's eyes were promising; they showed, he imagined, kindness.

He isn't sure whether he was right or not about that.

“Things have gotten better, between us,” he says. “I hope you agree.”

“We aren't fighting anymore,” Sadık says.

“You've learned to control your temper,” Herakles says drily.

Sadık winces. “Yeah, that too.”

“We're still treating sex the way we did before,” Herakles says.

This is the reason he wanted to make sure they had this conversation in a gay-friendly location.

“I mean. I show up at your place, or you at mine, we fuck, one of us leaves in the morning and we don't talk about it. It's not as – violent as it was, but...”

He isn't referring to Sadık's abuse before his revolution here; the violence of their sex life since has been two way, viciously cold, never quite crossing a line into actual violation but always risking it.

Behind them, a female speaker begins to berate the male one about his statement that Turkey is a Middle Eastern country. Sadık glances back as though he wants to join the argument for a moment, and Herakles suppresses the urge to smirk.

“No,” Sadık says. “I mean – you're right, it's not as violent, but we're still acting like. Like.”

“Like we're having an affair or something,” Herakles says.

“Yeah. Like Iran and I did back when we were at war and still...” Sadık shakes his head, grimacing. “I shouldn't treat you like that. I'm sorry. You mean more than that to me.”

Herakles is simultaneously gratified by the apology and a little stung – as though he had no will of his own to change or participate. “I _did_ start it,” he says drily, and Sadık looks like he wants to argue for a moment but nods.

“I don't bring it up to – to remonstrate you for it,” Herakles says. “I wanted to point it out, and to – to ask if you wanted to make this something else. Something more.”

The naked hope in Sadık's face is more painful than anything he has said to Herakles in a long, long time. It shines out of his eyes like sunlight reflected from his sword.

“I'd,” Sadık says, shakily, and tries to take a sip out of his empty coffee cup. “I'd like that a lot.”

“One thing,” Herakles says. This is the unpleasant part, but he thinks it needs to be said, one final time. “If you ever hit me again. I'm leaving.”

“I hope so.” Sadık looks away. “You don't need to say it like a threat. I wouldn't want you to stay, if I – hurt you again.”

“Good,” Herakles says. Now that that is accomplished, he wants it entirely over with, so he leans across the table to kiss him.

It's a good kiss. Sadık was once clumsy with inexperience and nerves, but he has had hundreds of years to learn skills as these – and others, lessons that Herakles perhaps wishes he had not.

There is no going back to the people they were, no undoing the past. They can only go forward, as the people they are now. Herakles closes his eyes and tries to enjoy the fact of a skilled partner who knows him well; to be comforted by the familiarity of Sadık's short beard against his cheeks instead of disconcerted.

Breaking off, a little out of breath, Sadık says, “So what now? I doubt you want to – to get married again.”

“Maybe later,” Herakles says, instead of considering the implications of that terrifying thought. “For now-”

Appropriately, the argument behind them has progressed into Western cultural influence and whether it is beneficial, imperialist, or both.

“For now,” he says, taking Sadık's hand under the table. He allows himself to be, for this moment, shy. It's not the artful and artificial modesty of a courtesan, but a real anxiety behind real vulnerability: he is only asking for what he really wants. “Would you like to be my boyfriend?”

Sadık laughs – they both laugh, actually, at the way the question sounds. But Sadık's voice cracks a little with entirely adult and real emotion when he squeezes Herakles' fingers and says, “Yes. Please, yes.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Like my fic? Consider reblogging it on [tumblr](http://basketofnovas.tumblr.com/tagged/fanfiction).


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